The following is a brief description of the background to the development of the present invention.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of this area is to create a sailboat concept that is efficient when heeling from 0-25 degrees and in the most varying wave resistance at these heeling angles.
The primary problem of how to take advantage of the self-righting power of the keel, but without forfeiting its hydrodynamic properties, is also encountered at these varying heeling angles.
Today's designers are naturally obliged to give very careful consideration to whether these fundamental forces can create the most favourable synthesis with the multiplicity of other parameters, and in the majority of cases they usually produce a design that reaches its ideal heeling at an early point in the wind register.
We must now address the sensitive problem of a design which reaches its ideal heeling at an early stage, but which is subsequently exposed to wind velocities capable of reaching such high levels that they have a devastating effect on all known designs.
We can now observe the actual results of these severe problems in the market, and we can see that today's materials are very extreme and were originally developed within the space industry.
The space materials of today have enormous properties when exposed to the specifically envisaged loads, but they lose these properties in the face of varying or random loads.
The construction of a sailing boat differs fundamentally from that of most other high-technology means of transport in the sense that it lacks an energy input that is capable of being influenced directly, and one is very probably obliged to take account of the fact that it is supplied continuously with new energy from the surroundings.
This surrounding potential energy is extremely rich in variation and is capable, like all other energy, of producing a devastating effect in the absence of an understanding how to control its inherent unique properties from outside, and the problem is complicated considerably when these properties must be harnessed and harmonized to a very sensitive human devices.
This variation-rich energy has until now been controlled in the majority of designs by the use of extremely static materials, in which this static character has been capable of variation to some extent by human influence.
The fundamental character of the designs has nevertheless remained static in the face of the variation-rich energy-flow, with the consequence that the majority of the potential energy sources have passed the craft with incomplete efficiency.
The unavoidable consequence of this knowledge and experience is the quest for a material and a design which conform as closely as possible to these variation-rich force-flows and which, through their flexible and sensitive nature, allow these forces to act freely without causing unexpected material failure through static brittleness.
The following problem now arises with regard to how to determine the limits within which this new material should be dynamic, and what parameters influence its dynamic properties.
These problems are so complex, when combined, that it is extremely difficult to produce a useful summary for an overall solution.
One possible way to address these problems is to examine living organisms and to establish how the constraints of evolution have caused them to adapt dynamically in accordance with this complicated network of different forces.
Closer examination of these organisms reveals that they resist forces not only through their dynamic features, but that they can also go beyond their maximum dynamic limits and thereafter make a sacrifice which involves forfeiting a proportion of their organic material to the advantage of their global potential and life-force.
The organism, which is subordinate to evolution's often secret but all-powerful meaning, is replaced in the present invention by inorganic substances in intimately interplay with human consciousness.
In this complex interplay between the hull of a boat and its sail area, the proposed invention changes the requirements for the relationship of both to aerodynamics and hydrodynamics, not simply by achieving a variable and dynamic sail area, and it is also concerned, to at least the same high degree, to permit the boat hull to be used more exactly and for a longer period close to the ideal values which constitute the character of the design.